The general audience of 29 September took place in St Peter's
Square in the presence of a large crowd of pilgrims from various parts
of the world. Pope John Paul delivered the following address, following
the theme of the last several weeks.

In the Letter to the Ephesians (5:21-33)—as
in the prophets of the Old Testament (e.g., in Isaiah)—we
find the great analogy of marriage or of the spousal love between Christ
and the Church.

What function does this analogy fulfill in regard to the mystery
revealed in the old and the new covenants? The answer to this question
must be gradual. First of all, the analogy of spousal or conjugal love
helps to penetrate the essence of the mystery. It helps to understand it
up to a certain point, naturally, in an analogical way. It is obvious
that the analogy of earthly human love of the husband for his wife, of
human spousal love, cannot provide an adequate and complete
understanding of that absolutely transcendent Reality which is the
divine mystery, both as hidden for ages in God, and in its historical
fulfillment in time, when "Christ so loved the Church and gave himself
up for her" (Eph 5:25). The mystery remains transcendent in regard to
this analogy as in regard to any other analogy, whereby we seek to
express it in human language. At the same time, however, this analogy
offers the possibility of a certain cognoscitive penetration into the
essence of the mystery.

Realized by Christ

2. The analogy of spousal love permits us to understand in a certain
way the mystery which for ages was hidden in God, and which in turn was
realized by Christ, as a love proper to a total and irrevocable gift of
self on the part of God to man in Christ. It is a question of "man" in
the personal and at the same time communitarian dimension. (This
communitarian dimension is expressed in the Book of Isaiah and in the
prophets as "Israel," and in the Letter to the Ephesians as the "Church";
one could say: the People of God of the old and of the new
covenant.) We may add that in both conceptions, in a certain sense the
communitarian dimension is placed in the forefront. But it is not to
such an extent as completely to hide the personal dimension, which, on
the other hand, pertains simply to the essence of conjugal love. In both
cases we are dealing rather with a significant "reduction of the
community to the person":(1) Israel and the Church are considered as
bride-person in relation to the bridegroom-person (Yahweh and Christ).
Every concrete "I" should find itself in that biblical "we."

God of the covenant

3. So then, the analogy which we are speaking of permits us to
understand in a certain degree the revealed mystery of the living God
who is Creator and Redeemer. (And as such he is, at the same time, God
of the covenant.) It permits us to understand this mystery in the manner
of a spousal love, just as it allows us to understand it also in the
manner of a love of "compassion" (according to the text of Isaiah), or
in the manner of a "paternal" love (according to the Letter to the
Ephesians, especially in the first chapter). The above-mentioned ways of
understanding the mystery are also without doubt analogical. The analogy
of spousal love contains in itself a characteristic of the mystery,
which is not directly emphasized either by the analogy of the love of
compassion or by the analogy of paternal love (or by any other analogy
used in the Bible to which we would have referred).

Radical and total gift

4. The analogy of spousal love seems to emphasize especially the
aspect of the gift of self on the part of God to man, "for ages" chosen
in Christ (literally: to "Israel," to the "Church")—a
total (or rather radical) and irrevocable gift in its essential
character, that is, as a gift. This gift is certainly radical and
therefore total. We cannot speak of that totality in a metaphysical
sense. Indeed, as a creature man is not capable of receiving the gift of
God in the transcendental fullness of his divinity. Such a total gift
(uncreated) is shared only by God himself in the triune communion of the
Persons. On the contrary, God's gift of himself to man, which the
analogy of spousal love speaks of, can only have the form of a
participation in the divine nature (cf. 2 Pt 1:4), as theology makes
clear with very great precision. Nevertheless, according to this
measure, the gift made to man on the part of God in Christ is a total,
that is, a radical gift, as the analogy of spousal love indicates. In a
certain sense, it is all that God could give of himself to man,
considering the limited faculties of man, a creature. In this way, the
analogy of spousal love indicates the radical character of grace, of the
whole order of created grace.

Sacrament and mystery

5. The foregoing seems to be what can be said in reference to the
primary function of our great analogy, which has passed from the
writings of the prophets of the Old Testament to the Letter to the
Ephesians, where, as has already been noted, it underwent a significant
transformation. The analogy of marriage, as a human reality in which
spousal love is incarnated, helps to a certain degree and in a certain
way to understand the mystery of grace as an eternal reality in God and
as a historical fruit of mankind's redemption in Christ. However, we
said before that this biblical analogy not only "explains" the mystery.
On the other hand the mystery defines and determines the adequate manner
of understanding the analogy, and precisely this element, in which the
biblical authors see "the image and likeness" of the divine mystery. So
then, the comparison of marriage (because of spousal love) to the
relationship of Yahweh-Israel in the old covenant and of Christ-Church
in the new covenant decides, at the same time, the manner of
understanding marriage itself and determines this manner.

6. This is the second function of our great analogy. In the perspective
of this function we approach the problem of sacrament and mystery, that
is, in the general and fundamental sense, the problem of the
sacramentality of marriage. This seems especially justified in the light
of the analysis of the Letter to the Ephesians (5:21-33). Indeed, in
presenting the relationship of Christ to the Church in the image of the
conjugal union of husband and wife, the author of this letter speaks in
the most general and at the same time fundamental way. He speaks not
only of the fulfillment of the eternal divine mystery, but also of the
way in which that mystery is expressed in the visible order, of the way
in which it has become visible, and therefore has entered into the
sphere of sign.

Visibility of the mystery

7. By the term "sign" we mean here simply the "visibility of the
Invisible." The mystery for ages hidden in God—that
is, invisible—has
become visible first of all in the historical event of Christ. The
relationship of Christ to the Church, which is defined in the Letter to
the Ephesians as "a great mystery," constitutes the fulfillment and the
concretization of the visibility of the mystery itself. The author of
the Letter to the Ephesians compares the indissoluble relationship of
Christ and the Church to the relationship between husband and wife, that
is, to marriage—referring
at the same time to the words of Genesis (2:24), which by God's
creative act originally instituted marriage—turns
our attention to what was already presented—in
the context of the mystery of creation—as
the "visibility of the Invisible," to the very "origin" of the
theological history of man.

It can be said that the visible sign of marriage "in the beginning,"
inasmuch as it is linked to the visible sign of Christ and of the
Church, to the summit of the salvific economy of God, transfers the
eternal plan of love into the historical dimension and makes it the
foundation of the whole sacramental order. It is a special merit of the
author of the Letter to the Ephesians that he brought these two signs
together, and made of them one great sign—that
is, a great sacrament (sacramentum magnum).

NOTE

1. It is not merely a question of the personification of human
society, which constitutes a fairly common phenomenon in world
literature, but of a specific "corporate personality" of the Bible,
marked by a continual reciprocal relationship of the individual to the
group (cf. H. Wheeler Robinson, "The Hebrew Conception of Corporate
Personality," BZAW 66 [1936], pp. 49-62; cf. also J. L.
McKenzie, "Aspects of Old Testament Thought," The Jerome Biblical
Commentary, Vol. 2 [London: 1970], p. 748).

Taken from:
L'Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
4 October 1982, page 1

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